Saturday, February 11, 2012

Culture In Pieces
Essays on Ancient Texts in Honour of Peter Parsons
Edited by Dirk Obbink and Richard Rutherford

This volume originated in a conference of the same title, held in Oxford in September 2006, to celebrate the 70th birthday of Peter Parsons, Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford from 1989 to 2003. The contributors, who are former pupils, colleagues or collaborators with Peter Parsons, share a deep admiration for him and his work. Peter Parsons has, throughout his career, been engaged in research on newly discovered papyrus texts, and such texts play an important part in this volume's discussions. He has also constantly sought to use these texts to illuminate the literary and cultural history of antiquity. The essays in this volume are suitably diverse, reflecting the broad interests of the honorand: they straddle prose and verse, literary and subliterary texts, addressing both theoretical issues and specific practical problems of interpretation which contribute to the difficulties faced in giving form and meaning to the diverse and fragmentary evidence of ancient literary history - to give some kind of partial unity to 'culture in pieces'.

Broader topics considered include the methodology of editing fragments, the problems of identifying authorship (New Comedy being treated as a test case), the ambiguities of texts which may or may not be read as ironic, and the development of the Greek novel. Among major authors treated are Pindar, Euripides, Menander, Callimachus, and Ovid. The volume also includes an introduction outlining Peter Parsons's career and achievements, and a bibliography of his publications.

Features

Fully illustrated with the important papyrus texts discussed, as well as a substantial colour plate section.

Includes a complete and up to date bibliography of the writings of Peter Parsons.

Includes texts in an improved form or not easily accessible elsewhere.

About the Author(s)

Dirk Obbink has held positions at Columbia and Ann Arbor. He was appointed University Lecturer in Papyrology in 1995 and has taught in Oxford since.

Richard Rutherford has been Tutor in Greek and Latin Literature at Christ Church College, Oxford, since 1982.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations

Abbreviations and Conventions

Notes on Contributors

Introduction

Richard Rutherford and Dirk Obbink

1.Vanishing Conjecture: The Recovery of Lost Books from Aristotle to Eco, Dirk Obbink

2.Pindar as a Man of Letters , M. L. West

3.The Papyri of Herodotus , S. R. West

4.The Use and Abuse of Irony , Richard Rutherford

5.Greek Letters in Hellenistic Bactria , Adrian Hollis

6.Menander and his Rivals: New Light from the Comic Adespota on Papyri? H.-G. Nesselrath